Philippus Jacobus Hoedemaker

Born in 1839 into a Separated Reformed ("Afgescheiden Gereformeerde") church family – although his subsequent career would be conducted within the "Hervormd" national church – Hoedemaker spent his teen and early-college-age years in the United States, where his family moved in 1852.

He studied theology for three years at the Congregationalist College in Chicago (again noteworthy considering his future ecclesiastical orientation), during which time he supported himself by preaching, for which, it was acknowledged on all sides, he had a gift.

[1] Hoedemaker returned to Europe in 1861 to complete his education, in 1867 graduating magna cum laude from Utrecht University with a doctorate in divinity, by virtue of a dissertation entitled Het Probleem der Vrijheid en het Theïstisch Godsbegrip [The Problem of Freedom and the Theistic Concept of God] (Amsterdam, H. Höveker, 1867).

[6] Hoedemaker's career as minister of the Word began in 1868 in Veenendaal with a call to the national church congregation there.

During his period in Veenendaal, Hoedemaker befriended Abraham Kuyper, and in 1880 he accepted a position at the new Free University.

Not that he disagreed with Kuyper's basic agenda, to bring the lordship of Christ to bear in every area of life.

Hoedemaker shared the original purpose of the Free University, "which takes the Bible as the unconditional basis on which to rear the whole structure of human knowledge in every department of life,"[7] thus promoting science formed by Scripture and Confession, with theology restored as the "queen of the sciences."

After his break with Kuyper, Hoedemaker returned to the pulpit, first in Frisia (Nijland, two years) and then Amsterdam, where he would lead the consolidation of the orthodox Reformed within the national church.

In response, Hoedemaker was sending the message that "Gereformeerd" was not the private property of the Nonconformists, but was the patrimonial title of the Dutch Reformed generally.

Both Article 36 of the Belgic Confession Vindicated against Dr. Abraham Kuyper and Reformed Ecclesiology in an Age of Denominationalism were written in this light.

Perhaps most important of all, Hoedemaker sparked a movement in favor of the national church and the heritage of the Christian state which gained many adherents and exerted profound influence on the development of Dutch theology, the national church, and Christian political action.

He died on 26 July 1910. de Bie and Loosjes, Biographisch woordenboek, pp. 51ff.